Library Guides: Africana Studies Library Guide: Slavery

Slavery Statistics and Data

Historical Statistics of the United States. Chapter Bb: Slavery
Contains cumulative historical statistics for the United States from 1789-2000. This resource is a compendium of statistics from over 1000 sources and includes over 37,000 data series. Chapter Bb deals specifically with slavery.

Digitized Primary Source Collections on Slavery

African Origins: Portal to Africans Liberated from Transatlantic Slave Vessels (Emory)
Contains information about the migration histories of Africans forcibly carried on slave ships into the Atlantic. Using the personal details of 91,491 Africans liberated by International Courts of Mixed Commission and British Vice Admiralty Courts, this resource makes possible new geographic, ethnic, and linguistic data on peoples captured in Africa and pulled into the slave trade.

American Slave: A Composite Autobiography
From 1936 to 1938, the Federal Writers' Project employed writers and journalists to interview ex-slaves in the United States. Nearly 4,000 interviews were ultimately collected and are presented in this database.
Black Abolitionist Papers
This collection details the extensive work of African Americans to abolish slavery in the United States prior to the Civil War. Covering the period 1830-1865, the collection presents the international impact of African American activism against slavery, in the writings of the activists themselves. Includes articles, documents, correspondence, proceedings, manuscripts, and literary works of almost 300 Black abolitionists show the full range of their activities in the United States, Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland, France and Germany.

The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record
The approximately 1,235 images in this collection have been selected from a wide range of sources, most of them dating from the period of slavery.
Charles F. Heartman Manuscripts of Slavery Collection (Xavier University of Louisiana)
Consists of over 4000 pieces dating from 1724 to 1897, and relate directly to the social, economic, civil, and legal status of enslaved Negroes and Free People of Color in Louisiana an especially in New Orleans. The manuscripts are written in French, Spanish, and English.
Digital Library on American Slavery
An expanding resource compiling various independent online collections focused upon race and slavery in the American South. Although the current focus is sources associated with North Carolina, there is data relating to all 15 slave states and Washington, D.C., including detailed personal information about slaves, slaveholders, and free people of color.
Lost Friends: Advertisements from the Southwestern Christian Advocate
Access more than 1,800 advertisements featuring messages from individuals searching for loved ones lost in slavery.
North American Slave Narratives (UNC-CH)
his collection includes all the existing autobiographical narratives of fugitive and former slaves published as broadsides, pamphlets, or books in English up to 1920. Also included are many of the biographies of fugitive and former slaves and some significant fictionalized slave narratives published in English before 1920.

Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice 1490-2007
Primary source documents from archives and libraries across the Atlantic world. Coverage of topics such as the African Coast; the Middle Passage; the varieties of slave experience (urban, domestic, industrial, farm, ranch and plantation); Spiritualism and Religion; Resistance and Revolts; the Underground Railroad; the Abolition Movement; Legislation; Education; the Legacy of Slavery and Slavery Today.
Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive
Includes collections on the transatlantic slave trade, the global movement for the abolition of slavery, the legal, personal, and economic aspects of the slavery system, and the dynamics of emancipation in the U.S. as well as in the Caribbean, Latin America, and other regions-- cross-searchable pages sourced from books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, legal documents, court records, monographs, manuscripts, and maps published in the U.S., U.K., England, the Netherlands, Haiti, and Spain. The majority of sources are in English, with a good strong share of French and some Spanish.
Southern Life, Slavery, and the Civil War
Consists of modules with a focus on Slavery and the Law; Slavery in Antebellum Southern Industries; records focused on the Slave trade and other legal issues pertaining to slavery.

The resource comprises the following modules: Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Law and Order in 19th Century America (1636-1880); Slavery in Antebellum Southern Industries (1700-1896); Slavery and the Law (1775-1867); and Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantations Records, Parts 1-4.

Slave Biographies: The Atlantic Database Network
An open access data repository of information on the identities of enslaved people in the Atlantic World. It includes the names, ethnicities, skills, occupations, and illnesses of individual slaves.
Texas Runaway Slave Project (TRSP)
A database of runaway slave advertisements, articles and notices from newspapers published in Texas. The project has so far documented the names of over 1400 runaway slaves from Texas.
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
Information on almost 36,000 slaving voyages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The actual number is estimated to have been as high as 12.5 million.
Unknown No Longer - Virginia Historical Society
Accounts that collectively help tell the stories of African Americans who have lived in Virginia over the centuries.

British Online Archives
Primary sources documenting the history of British colonialism, the American Revolution, and slavery in the West Indies and America.